How to make garden paths with your own hands?

Garden paths can be formed in a variety of ways. But only knowing the specific features of each of them, you will be able to avoid mistakes. Even turning to professionals, it is useful to know which steps are necessary and justified, and which are only an extra expenditure of funds and efforts.

Gardens, vegetable gardens, summer cottages for many people are no less important than city apartments or private houses. But in order for worries and worries to leave you, you need to take care of the infrastructure of your possessions. Their arrangement cannot be considered complete if the garden path is not properly prepared.

Everyone can create and design it with their own hands, using the most intricate materials and even just old unnecessary things. Thanks to this, significant savings are achieved, and an attractive decorative element appears on the site. It is important to consider that the garden path is a small, carefully designed path that allows one person to move freely. As a result, you will not need to spend extra building materials on its construction.

Before making a final decision in favor of a particular material, you need to evaluate all its characteristics, not only positive, but also negative. There are a lot of proposals on how to make garden paths cheap and beautiful, but it should be borne in mind that they are realizable only in a small area. When you need to build a wide and long track, you can forget about saving.

The creation of a cement pad, while increasing the durability, leads to additional costs.

Be sure to take care of the stylistic consistency paths to the surrounding space. If you do not agree on it, do not fit harmoniously into the garden ensemble as a whole, no effort expended will justify the created bad taste.

Therefore, it is worth examining the properties of individual materials and specific versions.

It is important to choose not only simple ways of preparing the tracks, but also those that will be reliable and convenient, guaranteeing safe movement in your area. Even budget materials should be evaluated for their resistance to corrosion and decay, the appearance of mold colonies, resistance to frost, heat and moisture. Think about how easy it will be to repair the pavement, whether it will withstand the load.

A trail that is rarely used may simply be covered with gravel, sand or rubble. But it is advisable to refine the passages between the beds in the country house, since it is unlikely that anyone will like walking on dusty or soggy ground from rain. Places where you will be moving constantly, it is recommended to pave with strong materials or make a monolithic layer.

In addition to practical qualities, the compatibility of the material with the dominant feature of any garden, a personal plot - a residential building is also very significant. It is advisable when laying the track with your own hands or with the help of professionals, choose the same material that was used to cover the facade. Pay attention to the terrain as well - it sometimes happens that it is difficult to lay certain material on a slope (rise) or to lead a path from it along a curved path.

Avoid placing walkways where water can accumulate due to melting snow or rain.

An important role is played not only by the correct choice of material and track route, but also by the preparation of its base, especially when using gravel and crushed stone. To prevent these materials from scattering, not moving anywhere, geogrids are used. The pebbles located in the cells will move anywhere, they cannot get lost, walk or ride a car, a bicycle will be much easier. At the same time, a specially selected material excludes the germination of weeds, the accumulation of rain and melt water.

The geotextile that makes up the lattice can be used without the help of professionals. In terms of composition, it can be very different, for example, polyester fabric is environmentally safe, polypropylene is characterized by increased strength, and is not at all susceptible to the formation of mold colonies. The multicomponent coating in rolls is notable for its low cost, but at the same time its service life and reliability are not large enough in comparison with other options.

Now that the base is completely ready, it is time to characterize the main types of garden paths.

Wood is an almost universal material, suitable for any kind of work and organically combined with different types of gardens. An undoubted advantage will be the fact that the tree allows you to implement your idea very flexibly, to form exactly the structure that you want to make.

Most often, garden paths are built from boards, the width of which is selected in accordance with the width of the structure being created. You can put them both close to each other and with a gap of 5-10 cm, which allows you to save a little material and create an original appearance.

Structures made of wood cuts can be a good alternative to planks, but you need to carefully assess the compatibility with the rest of the details on the site. Think about what kind of wood to choose, how to choose the original color and its appearance. The diameter of the log house is also of great importance for creating an elegant path.

A continuous (continuous) track is also formed on a crushed stone lining or other loose material, must be processed with sandpaper to perfect smoothness.

If you do not want to spend money on boards or a wooden blockhouse, you can use various materials that are unnecessary in your household. Judging by the practice of a large number of people, almost everything that does not fail for a long time is suitable. It is not difficult to make a track out of old tires: you need to cut them and put them along the intended path; you will definitely need to form a frame from the boards. Despite its low attractiveness, such a track device will definitely last for several years.

All care can be reduced to the removal of debris and its periodic flushing from the hose. The master class will allow you to master two basic approaches to the use of tires: ready-made or in the form of rubber tiles obtained during the processing of car tires. On uneven terrain, it is advisable to use such a technique as a path in the "staircase" format.

Usually, the tires are placed flat on the ground, moving from the lowlands to the elevated places of the site; the tire will hold firmly if it is buried and filled in the middle with soil. You can avoid slipping in bad weather by sprinkling the path with gravel.

It is most correct to build summer cottage cement paths in the fall, when the harvest has already been harvested, annual crops have been removed, perennial crops have been covered for the winter season.

Concreting using ready-made forms requires preparing, in addition to sand and cement, also water, gravel or crushed stone, small boards, cardboard boxes, adhesive tape or insulating tape, and a manual concrete mixer. The first step will be to select the exact location for the path, which should be leveled, not have elevation differences. Before concreting the selected strip, place a plank curb, fill the inner part with a sandy layer mixed with gravel (crushed stone), level the base.

To prepare a solution, you need to take cement of a grade not lower than M200 (however, M500 is the upper limit, a more durable coating is not needed in practice and will only unnecessarily increase the cost of construction). Check if there are any lumps in the powder, and if there is such a need, sift it additionally. The mixture is formed with 3 parts sand, 1 part cement and a little less water. Moisten it until the solution is easy to pour into the mold, but it should not spread.

Always prepare exactly as much cement mortar as you can use in the next 60-90 minutes, otherwise it will be of inferior quality, and then it will be completely lost. It is easiest to cement a garden path without cracks using ready-made forms. Sometimes it is necessary to trim a wet surface with a spatula. After the mortar begins to set, put it in the retracted position and move the mold further.

No matter how hard you try to do the job efficiently, the missing places will still remain, since the shape does not ideally repeat the configuration of the track. Filling of self-prepared forms will help to compensate for this shortcoming. Then the cardboard will come in handy, which will need to be cut into strips, bend them in a certain way and connected with insulating tape (tape). The workpieces are filled with a solution, it is left inside until it finally hardens.

When the block made of concrete is dry, the cardboard is carefully removed. Since there will still be gaps between the cobblestones, they must be filled with cement chips, crushed rubble or other loose substance of sufficient strength. Instead of a standard fence made of boards, it is possible to use more extraordinary types of curbs.

The laying of wood concrete blocks has its own characteristics. The connection between each other is achieved with a cement-sand mixture in a ratio of 1: 3.Carefully check whether the purchased products deviate from the established dimensions, and if there are differences, you will have to increase the masonry seam to 0.8-1.5 cm.In contrast to the construction of capital structures, the increased thermal conductivity of a cement seam in comparison with arbolite does not matter ...

Ready-to-use adhesives are allowed to be used only when the size of the wood concrete block only slightly differs from the declared one.

You need to work at an air temperature of at least 6 degrees Celsius; the solution is made thicker so that it is better retained on the wood concrete, and after the blocks are adhered to it, they cannot be moved anywhere. The coloring additive will allow you to give both concrete and wood concrete exactly the required color.

The use of plastic bottles in the design of garden paths is popular due to the simplicity and ease of this solution. It is very cheap and much more durable than using tires. A wide range of colors and the absence of their fading over time, the ability to tightly lay containers in the ground will delight most gardeners and gardeners.

When using whole bottles, try to place them so as to exclude spontaneous movement and sinking into the ground. Any of them must be filled with sand (gravel), otherwise it will easily wrinkle and crack from the slightest load. A trench 1.5 shovels deep is torn off for the future path, and it is fenced off from all sides with plank formwork. The substrate is made of rubble, unnecessary wood, broken brick and dry leaves - such a base will prevent subsidence of the path itself.

A layer of earth is poured over the improvised foundation, rammed, as well as an additional sand layer 20-30 mm thick. Only after that does it make sense to put the prepared bottles. They are laid either horizontally, orienting towards the edge, or vertically - with the bottom up. You need to walk along the bottle lane to evenly press into the sand. Pour a homogeneous mixture of sand with cement into the smallest gaps between the bottles, tamp it carefully with a board and pour water over it.

Plastic structures are economical, but there are still more durable and environmentally friendly solutions; an example of them can be considered paving with natural stone. At the same time, natural raw materials are far superior in their aesthetic capabilities even to the most intricate concrete blocks, bricks, and special tiles. Be prepared that you will need to pay a considerable amount to pack all the necessary material and even just purchase it. The stone is quite heavy, and in almost every case, you need to order a truck to deliver it to the right place.

The cost only seems high: with a long period of use, less wear than concrete structures, quickly pays for all costs. If you want to do all the work yourself, use sandstone, granite, quartzite, shale or shungite. A granite walkway can work for at least 200 years without external changes. Its external color depends on the concentration of quartz in the composition of this rock.

Avoid shale varieties with a significant number of pores.

Quartzite differs from shale products only in the presence of mica, it is stronger, but at the same time it is more difficult to process.

Shungite allows you to make a path that meets the principles of classical or modern design. The advantages of this mineral are very low abrasion, frost resistance and excellent tolerance of aggressive substances.

In most orchards, the paths are laid out with sandstone. Although not as hard as granite, it can still last for decades and is relatively inexpensive.

Now we can talk about how the finished blocks are formed. In addition to paving stones (chipped), sawn stone has approximately the same geometric configuration. A wide range of sizes and shapes is characteristic of cobblestone. The limestone stands out for the fact that its surface is invariably even (hence the name). The processing of chipped limestone borders is not carried out; its laying is very quick, even by non-professionals.

Only decorative paths are made of cobblestones.that look elegant among trees, bushes and grass, but are extremely difficult to walk on. The exact opposite of cobblestone is sawn stone, which is processed very carefully. It is easy to move along a path made of such material, even in high-heeled shoes.

This option is bad because not all shoes are easy to walk on. It is possible to fill up gravel without concreting the substrate, the only thing that is required is a geotextile bedding so that weeds do not germinate, and the formation of curbs. The price of gravel materials fluctuates quite strongly, the size of the fraction and the brand of the supplier play a decisive role. It should be noted a number of undoubted advantages that gravel dumping has for a country house.

Backfill works well with wood, concrete, stone and even metal elements.

In addition to screening, you can use a layer of rubble, make a path of various widths. There is a great variety of decorative elements - these are columns, and arched structures, and "islands". After removing leaves, weeding out a few weeds and leveling gravel, you can consider the maintenance of the path over. If you suddenly need to repair the strip, the work will be reduced to adding gravel material or mixing the already used one.

The undoubted advantage of bricks is their strength, which ensures the preservation of the characteristics of the material for a number of years, even with constant active use. Among artificial materials, no other will allow such a clear focus on the stylistic connection with the landscape and the house. If the installation was done strictly according to technology, it will be necessary to redo the track only when creating a new landscape, with which it will no longer be in harmony.

Any owner can build a brick path, using a few of the simplest tools, and subsequent care will be minimal in terms of time and effort. It is undesirable to create paths already 0.9 m - it will be very inconvenient to walk along such lanes.

The classic option for making a garden path is the use of plastic covers. Naturally, it will take a lot of them, and they look the same in order to maintain a certain style. It is recommended to prepare a sand base. It is necessary to ram it as carefully as possible, then the track will confidently serve for a couple of years.

An alternative to tires can be considered the use of broken tiles, which remain in abundance after most repairs.It is very important not just to lay it out, but to arrange it in such a way that the surface looks as attractive as possible. Most often, a sandy substrate is prepared, and when forming a mosaic, they act as creatively as possible. But it is important not to forget about the convenience of using the track and the fact that all its parts must have the same height. Pieces of tiles must be separated by at least a small gap, and after laying they are tied with cement mortar.

Some craftsmen act differently: they start by filling the necessary strip with cement, after which they proceed to laying the broken tiles. But this method requires the ability to work quickly and complete certainty with the design of the surface, since there is no time to come up with it after preparing the mixture.

From factory materials, it is best to use paving slabs, especially since its application does not require significant experience. If desired, such a coating can be made with your own hands.

This will require vibrating machines. For 1 sq. m of coverage you need:

• A bucket of cement (grade not lower than A-Sh-400);
• Three times more sand;
• 0.2 kg of plasticizer;
• Coloring agent, if necessary.

It is unlikely that it will be possible to create a spectacular tile without dyes, and their consumption is relatively small, so it is unreasonable to save on such reagents. Experts recommend preparing for work not one, but at least two or three forms for obtaining tiles in order to dramatically speed up the process. The solution in the molds is compacted using a vibrating table or vibrating platform, and when the workpieces acquire the necessary strength, they can be used immediately.

There is a scheme that does not require sealing, but it involves the use of a large form. Immediately place the container in the selected place, pour the prepared mixture into it, making sure that no voids appear in the material. It is permissible to combine dyes of different tones, "adjusting" the appearance of the tile to the general perception of the site.

In most cases, the tiles themselves become attractive enough to satisfy aesthetic tastes.

If the goal is to speed up the work process as much as possible, you will have to abandon paving slabs and other materials and use reinforced concrete slabs. All actions will be reduced only to choosing the right places and laying the plates. The coating is not the most aesthetic, but very durable.

When preparing the path, take care of the design of the borders. They help to sharpen the border and avoid deterioration of the coating. Without a border, you can lay concrete slabs or natural stone with fanciful geometry. But sand, gravel and pebbles necessarily require an external fence.

If you prefer a rustic style, it is advisable to decorate the path with wood. Curved structures are best created using natural stone, and the brick will look perfect if there are buildings made of it nearby. Fans of original ornaments and patterns should choose paving stones of different tones. Gravel and pebble solutions are optimal in a garden with a pond.

Concrete and brick are compatible with each other. Pebbles with wood, gravel with natural stone can also be combined into an attractive ensemble. Laying gravel and small pebbles requires preliminary treatment of the soil with herbicides, covering it with plastic wrap or agrofibre. The outer border is tiled or brick.

When laying a stone path, there is a secret - it is better to choose those stones that have at least one flat edge.After filling the voids between the blocks, the path should be watered with water, sometimes it is necessary to sprinkle it with sand a second time to close the remaining gaps.

When laying paving stones, the standard technology involves preparing a trench 200 - 250 mm deep. If the thickness of the coating is more than 6 cm, it will inevitably rise above ground level, which requires the use of curbs. Paving stones, even with the most insignificant-looking defects, quickly deform and lose their characteristics.

Whatever material is chosen for laying tracks, it is worth preparing a detailed plan that will avoid mistakes.

If the pedestrian and terrace path is divided into diamond-shaped, square or triangular blocks, the top layer of soil is cut along the lines with a spatula or a sharply sharpened knife. Usually, when using tiles, they are set at the level of the lawn, and based on this consideration, the required excavation depth is determined, taking into account the base, concrete mixtures. We leave a gap on the surface for laying the topcoat. The concrete should dry for about two hours (depending on the thickness, on the weather), after which the laying of the stone just begins.

The depth of the pit should be equal to the total thickness of the wood and sand. The stacked fragments are knocked down with a hammer. The building level will help to notice deviations from the set depth. Gaps between wood blocks are filled with sand or gravel.

Having dealt with the materials and design methods, it's time to see how an exemplary garden path might look like.

The paving slabs of intricate geometric shapes are laid in a geogrid, but the workflow is not over yet.

A chain laid out of boards can be stylish, especially when alternating almost black and thick red tones, repeating one after another.

And this is how a row of stones may look like, going with a small separation from each other against the background of green lawn grass.

This, of course, is only a small part of the possible options. But already on them it is clearly visible how diverse the design of a garden path can be. Think, try, look for original moves, and you will succeed!

For information on how to make a garden path yourself, see the video below.